Weekly College Insider: Mother Nature Doesn’t Like Rugby

by Ted Hardy, Editor, Rugby America

Snow and weather caused cancellations of games for Cal, BYU, Utah, and the entire Northwest Collegiate Rugby Conference. Hey, what did you expect for rugby in February? However, Mother Nature couldn’t ruin it all and there was still plenty of rugby played this weekend.

As already posted in another article, the ACRL was in full swing this weekend in their first weekend of full action. Little did the budding rugby conference know, but the rugby teams successfully predicted the outcome of their corresponding ACC Basketball matchups this weekend.

It is unknown whether or not the ACRL leadership arranged the matchups to mirror their basketball counterparts, but basketball prognosticators and bookies may want to keep an eye on upcoming ACRL games before they make any predictions.

Clemson defeated Wake Forest 34-10 on the rugby pitch followed by a 63-49 Clemson basketball win over the Demon Deacons. North Carolina took down Maryland 23-20 before the Tarheels beat the Terps on the court 82-76. North Carolina State successfully dispatched Georgia Tech 34-6 and then watched the Wolfpack’s basketball team win 79-74 over GT.

Yes, the ACRL even successfully determined the winner in one of the big upsets of the college basketball weekend. Virginia Tech rolled over Duke 56-3 on Saturday which was an expected outcome. Then the Virginia Tech basketball team upset #1 ranked Duke 64-60.

Talk about eerie.

The final ACRL team not in action, University of Virginia, took on Radford and won 37-5.

In other college rugby action, Florida and Florida State keep marching through their competition. Florida won decisively over visiting Pitt 52-0 and Florida State defeated South Carolina 29-3. In other South action, Georgia finally got in the win column with a convincing 50-12 thrashing of Kennessaw State.

Moving on over to Texas, the big game this weekend was Texas State against University of Texas with a trip to the playoffs on the line. Texas State came away victorious with a 22-0 blanking of the Longhorns.

In other Texas matchups, Rice won 34-5 over the University of North Texas, Sam Houston State defeated Texas Tech 31-17, and Baylor took out the University of Dallas 22-8.

With plenty of established college rugby programs in Texas and the college restructure upon them, a new conference setup can’t be too far off for some of these teams.

Out west, Arizona continued their preparation for the Division I Premier kickoff with a 63-19 win over the University of New Mexico.

NCRC Leader board: The Northwest Collegiate Rugby Conference was on the shelf this weekend due to snow, so here are the current conference points leaders to tide you over.

1. Connor Fuller – University British Columbia: 33 Pts

2. Eric Populus – Eastern Washington University: 26 Pts

3. Sean Ferguson – University British Columbia: 16 Pts

T4. Sean Ferguson- University British Columbia: 15pts

T4: Aaron Lee – Central Washington University: 15pts

T4: Zach Heath – Oregon State University: 15pts

T4: David Turner – University British Columbia: 15pts

T4: Jarred Riffe – Washington State University: 15pts

T9: Ryan Hamilton – Central Washington University: 14pts

T9: Aaron Carr – University of Washington: 14pts

Under a week away from the kickoff of the Division I Premier competition and it is still pretty unclear how the matches will be reported. Stalwarts such as Cal, BYU, Tennessee, and a handful of others already do a great job getting out information. Without a centralized repository for information, some of the reporting might be dicey, but we’ll do our best as always.

The second part of Rugby America’s CPL preview (covering the West & Pacific Conferences) will be out in the next couple of days, so stay tuned.